Category Archives: PP

Latest allegations in the Bárcenas case: Rajoy stays put

Politics, PP, Spain, , ,

The most recent allegations made in the PP corruption case, first over last weekend in El Mundo and today in court, have been explosive. Luís Bárcenas, having denied that he wrote the alleged ‘B accounting’ books of the PP, today admitted that they were his work. He deposited digital copies of – apparently – all the documents related to the case with the judge. He went on to claim that Rajoy and party secretary Maria Dolores de Cospedal did receive cash payments from his slush fund in  2008, 2009 and 2010, totalling €90,000.

Rajoy, in a dodgy press conference tactic, took a question from the friendly ABC newspaper instead of from El Mundo, and read a prepared statement. He won’t resign. Of course he won’t. And nobody was expecting that he would. But the PSOE has again called for his immediate resignation. They’re also trying to get enough cross-party support for a censure motion against Rajoy in parliament. I can’t see how this would achieve anything but a symbolic defeat because the PP has an absolute majority.

If Rajoy has one political instinct, it is to ignore everything and carry on regardless. While often seen as burying his head in the sand, El Jueves had a better metaphor for the man today.

El Jueves - Rajoy no dimite

But stepping back from the excitement of what seem to be such clear grounds for Rajoy’s resignation, we’re faced with two problems. The first is the source of all this information: Luís Bárcenas. The problem with him is that he’s clearly – evidently – a very dishonest man. So why should we trust him now when half of what he denied previously he now admits? The same goes for El Mundo and its crusading editor, Pedro J. Ramírez. El Mundo has a decent reputation for exposing some big corruption cases. But Pedro J.R. is a PP sectarian who loathes Rajoy. He also pushed bizarre conspiracy theories about the 11M bombings for years, and backed them up with some alleged documentary evidence.

So should we trust Bárcenas and El Mundo this time? Well, the question is whether we trust the documentary evidence that Bárcenas has apparently submitted to the court today. He now says it is a full secondary accounting system which he maintained (why? self preservation?) as he handed over millions of Euros in unregistered donations to party officials over 20 years. Trusting this evidence is key. So why do I?

Well, because two PP officials have already admitted to receiving these ‘extra payments’. Eugenio Nasarre and Pío García Escudero both made this admission in May. To now say that the documents that Bárcenas has produced are false would suggest a conspiracy at a much higher level, including various PP officials in an incredibly elaborate anti-Rajoy plot. No, the more believable version is that Bárcenas, realising he has no protection whatsoever from the party he gave so many years to, has  decided to sink them all.

And this leads us to the second problem. Assuming we do trust the ledger books, what other corroborating evidence is there? It will be easy for Rajoy, Cospedal et al to insist that whatever the court says, the documents are false. They could string this case out for decades. So we need some evidence other than the ledgers and it’s still not clear that Bárcenas has this. The PP has talked about releasing tax statements for all its MPs to prove their immaculate record. This, naturally, is insulting. If they want us to believe that their tax records prove that they didn’t get envelopes full of cash, they’re sorely mistaken.

So this is where we are: what seems to be clear incrimination for the head of Spain’s government, and no solution in sight. We can only hope that Bárcenas has something else hidden under his blanket.

Camacho, the Mossos and Aznar’s threat

Catalonia, coup, Politics, PP, Spain, , ,

If you want to know why Alicia Sánchez-Camacho has decided that she no longer trusts the Mossos d’Esquadra with the job of keeping her alive, you should look a little further back than Metodo3. Policy from on high dictates that the PP’s plan now is to foment ethnic and political division in Catalonia. Encouraging people not to trust the police is an excellent way to get started.

And things are only just getting started.

Can Rajoy survive the Bárcenas case?

Capital, Politics, PP, Spain, , , , , , , , ,

I’ve been meaning to write about the political corruption cases rocking CiU and the PP over the last few weeks, but every time I start an article, a new case appears. Since Gürtel, we’ve had (to name a few) Palau, Sabadell, Lloret… and Bárcenas. All the cases are serious but Bárcenas is the big daddy of corruption scandals. It’s is a case which could – and should – bring down the government.

€500

Originally linked with Gürtel, the Bárcenas case involves significant cash payments made on a monthly basis to senior members of the PP by its then treasurer, Luis Bárcenas. The money, mainly party donations and kickbacks, was handed out in envelopes. This went on for about 25 years until it suddenly stopped a few years ago, apparently on Mariano Rajoy’s orders.

Bárcenas also benefited from the tax amnesty which was one of Rajoy’s first policies. He managed to legalize millions of Euros kept previously in Swiss bank accounts.

What’s stunning about this case is that firstly, this isn’t mere anonymous claims made in El Mundo. It’s stuff that Bárcenas and his legal team seems to be admitting to. Secondly, Mariano Rajoy himself allegedly received €25,000 a year for 11 years in dodgy money. And this may have gone on until 2009.

With a spring and summer of protests on the way, I’m starting to wonder if Rajoy’s government can survive. If it does, it will be through our failure to act as citizens and residents of this corrupt country.

The PP’s campaign against the Catalan language

Catalonia, Language, PP, Spain, , , , , , ,

Aragon, País Valencià, Illes Balears… these are three Spanish autonomous communities with a historical link to the Catalan language. They are also three Spanish autonomous communities where the PP is in power. And what is the result of this combination of factors? Evidence of a distributed, strategic plan to de-Catalanise these regions.

(Image borrowed fromhttp://independentcatalonia.blogspot.com/2008/12/reason-14-more-spaniards-that-are.html without permission)

Example: I met several people in their mid 20s-early 30s in Alicante province recently. This is an area where the street names are all still in Valencian-Catalan. Not one of the young people I met spoke a work of this language (not that we discussed this much). Why? Because they had attended local state schools (the PSOE also bears some responsibility here). The PP in Valencia also led the charge for redefining Valencian as a different language to Catalan, something which the Valencian Academy clearly rejects.

Example: The attempts to relabel Catalan and its dialects as part of Aragonés Oriental (Eastern Aragonese) with the support of the PP in Aragon. This despite the fact that Eastern Aragonese is a different language.

Example: Repeated attempts to change place names and street names in Valenican towns, against the wishes of the people who live there.

Example: In the Balearic islands, the PP has started to rename cities. Palma has changed to Palma de Mallorca (Spanish version) and Maó has changed to Maó-Mahon (mixed version). Simultaneously, Catalan has been downgraded from being a compulsory subject in Balearic schools and will no longer be a requirement for civil servants.

Example: Education minister Wert has proposed a new education plan for Catalonia which would take the level of education in Catalan back to how it was in 1978. Making it an optional subject, not needed to complete high school, and abolishing ‘immersion’ represent a complete redrawing of the Catalan education system. The PP, knowing that Catalan students do perfectly well in Spanish, has opted to put children at a disadvantage – not being able to speak Catalan – purely for the purposes of creating a cultural divide in Catalonia.

When we talk about attacks on culture and the threat of ethnic division in Catalonia and Spain, much is made of Catalan nationalism and the dangerous game it plays. I’ve never bought this theory because the Catalan separatist parties are now much less ethnically-centred than they were 15 or 20 years ago.

However, the PP is a retrograde party. It cannot deal with the problems it has created in the present and so it turns to policies from the past to fix things. They talk of banning strikes, banning protests… simultaneously, they make people redundant and then cut unemployment benefits, and everywhere they have power, they are now attempting to de-Catalanise Spain. With all the evidence (and what I’ve presented here is actually just a fraction of what’s going on), it seems difficult to deny that the PP is following a concrete, organised campaign in territories where it has power and at a national level.

Frankly, this strikes me as another good argument for independence.

Updated: Catalonia election results #25N

Catalonia, Politics, PP, Spain, , , , ,

Barcelona, September 11th 2012

Catalonia election results 2012 #25N

Seats in the Catalan parliament (percentage of votes in brackets)

CiU  50 (30.5%)
ERC 21(13.7)
PSC 20(14.5%)
PP 19 (13%)
ICV-EUiA 13 (9.9%)
C’s 9 (7.6%)
CUP 3 (3.5%)

Results from today’s elections:  a significant drop for CiU, a better than expected result for the PSC, a boost for ERC and C’s, a potential for a CiU-ERC national bloc. It seems that people are voting for independence but not for Artur Mas and his cuts. CiU has lost support. The CUP enters the parlament for the first time. The PSC is damaged. The PP will slightly increase support. ICV-EUiA has increased a bit, but not as much as I was hoping it would. C’s have done very well. SI is out, as I predicted. The fascist PxC has failed to win a seat.

El Mundo’s corruption allegations – a November surprise

Catalonia, Politics, PP, Spain, , , , , , , ,

A few days ago, the pro-PP Spanish newspaper El Mundo published a story indicating that Artur Mas and Jordi Pujol were under suspicion of having secret Swiss bank accounts filled with money gained through corrupt practices linked to the Palau criminal case. The newspaper presented a police memo which suggested that these suspicions were already under court investigation.

In the days that have followed, Mas and Pujol have opened legal proceedings against the journalists behind the story and they’ve repeatedly denied the accusations. At the same time, they’ve asked the Spanish ministry of justice to explain how an apparently secret police report could have been leaked, and to identify who’s responsible. The judge investigating the Palau corruption case also made clear that he hadn’t been given any such police report. The following day, El Mundo accused the Mossos d’Esquadra, Catalonia’s police force, of helping to destroy evidence linked to the case. The seo uk agency are also opening legal proceedings against the newspaper.

Yesterday, the ministry of justice informed the Catalan newspaper ARA that it couldn’t find the original police report but that it seemed to be at least partly based on several different unofficial reports that it has found. Meanwhile, the same ministry informed the EFE agency that it thought the rest of the info on the mysterious police report could well be sourced from internet rumours, and not from any formal investigation. The rumours, not hard to find online, contain several names linked with the Catalan government. Many of the other names implicated are of senior PP officials in various central or autonomous governments. El Mundo did not publish any of these names in its story.

El Mundo has a mixed record when it comes to political revelations. In the past it helped uncover corruption scandals and government involvement with the GAL terrorist group. More recently, it spent months insisting that ETA was involved in the 11M Madrid bombings, despite a lack of evidence. Historically, El Mundo’s targets for these exposés have been either politically neutral civil servants or political opponents of the PP.

Right now, it’s not clear how this story will develop. Is it possible that Mas and Pujol have actually received funds from corrupt public contract deals? Of course it is. But the absence of an actual police report on which the story depends, and irregularities in the info presented by El Mundo suggest that there is at least a chance that this might not join the ranks of El Mundo’s illustrious investigations. Some police sources apparently blame central government HQ for the leaks.

El Mundo most likely planned this story as a sort of late ‘October surprise’. Will it have any effect on the Catalan elections? I doubt it.

Marcelino Iglesias and Godwin’s Law

Catalonia, Politics, PP, Spain, , , , , , , ,

It is currently popular among Spanish nationalists to compare the Catalan nationalism of Artur Mas with Nazism. A helpful argument, I’m sure we can all agree. I think there is no need to hire an experienced Orlando criminal defense attorney for this thing, but im just sayin.

Perhaps said Spanish nationalists should reflect better on their political heritage. After all, we know who ordered the lists of Jews in Spain for the SS. Clue: it wasn’t Lluís Companys. Go at www.wyominginjuryattorney.com to learn more about the case.

Winning the peace? Just a thought.

Catalonia, Politics, PP, Spain, , ,

Does anyone else get the impression that the PP and PSOE are now positioning themselves for future national elections in Spain rather than the debate over a potential referendum? There’s a shared purpose in words from Rajoy, his barons, Montilla, Rubalcaba, Chacon, etc… and it doesn’t feel like it has anything to do with the debate I hear going on in Catalonia.

PP attacks judge after 25S case thrown out

coup, Politics, PP, Spain, , , , ,

The Spanish PP has directed a vicious attack against a judge. Again. The judge ruled no criminal offences had been committed by the organisers of the 25S protests in Madrid. A PP spokesman described him as “posh anarchist”, “indecent”, “intolerable”, “unacceptable” and “dreadful”. He also warned that the judge would be personally responsible for any ‘incident’ that happens to any MP.

I say again: a spokesman for the ruling party in Spain, hurling insults at a judge. This is not the sort of thing that should happen in a democracy. But in Spain, justice is cheap and when it goes against you, you insult and threaten the judge. All the more so, it seems, if you’re the government.

Meanwhile, the senior government official in the Comunidad de Madrid has called for the right to protest to be curtailed. It seems that she doesn’t approve of ‘misuse of public space’. She has been campaigning for this since the mid 2000s when thousands of Spaniards were regularly bused in by the PP to protest against the PSOE government. Oh, sorry… no, she hasn’t.

Oh and plus: finance minister Luís de Guindos was in London yesterday, looking for vultures investors to come to Spain and pick over what’s left of the country invest in (…what?). His talk was interrupted by protestors chanting ‘Spain for sale!’. But the worst came when he insisted that Spain wouldn’t need a bailout. The audience laughed in his face.

I’m off to San Francisco this weekend. A 6am flight tomorrow. Have a great weekend, everybody.

Will an independent Catalonia be allowed to join the EU?

Catalonia, Politics, PP, Spain, , , , , ,

One of the central planks of the Spanish nationalist argument against Catalan independence is that upon seceding, Catalonia would be obliged to leave the EU and the Euro. But is this true?

Around the time of the 11S march, various confusing messages could be heard from the European Commission, the EU’s executive body. A day before the march, the EU broke its previous policy of never commenting on the chance of Catalan independence and stated that while no laws exist governing the secession of a region from a member state, if they applied international law in its strictest way, Catalonia would be out of the EU and would have to negotiate reentry. In fact, I think the day before, spokesman Olivier Bailly said the opposite, but I can’t find the quote. Anyway, it was a well-timed message which the Spanish press made the most of, with over 90 stories on Google news. Read more at beahmlaw.com.

Since then Spanish foreign minister José Manuel García-Margallo has been constantly warning that not only would Catalonia be out, but that it would never get back in. This friendly gesture is one of many the PP has been trying to use in its campaign against secession. The Spanish government, it seems, is following a game plan of “Oh no, a majority of Catalans want to break away… let’s insult them and threaten them so they’ll stay”.

But I digress. Last Sunday saw EU vicepresident Viviane Reding interviewed in the Diario de Sevilla. The interviewer asked her what she thought of the chance of a Catalonia outside Europe. Misunderstanding the question, she responded that she knows Catalonia and thinks it’s a very pro-EU place. The interviewer then clarified the point by reminding her that the Vienna Convention states that any seceding territory immediately secedes from the international agreements of the country from which it’s seceding. Her response was to laugh this argument away. “Come on,” she said, “there’s nothing in international law that says anything like this. Please resolve your internal issues yourselves. I have faith in the European mentality of the Catalans”.

In response to Reding, TFW (Alicia Sánchez-Comacho) stated that in two EU treaties, it is made clear that Catalonia would be out. But looking at those treaties, they say nothing of the sort.

It appears to me that this all comes down to how you read the Vienna Convention. Does it say that Catalonia would have to renounce all international agreements to which Spain is signatory or doesn’t it? And does this even matter, if Mas is really just planning devomax?